


til voices wake us and we drown

by erlkoenig



Category: Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor (Video Game), TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, I regret playing this game because they did so wrong by my boy Tyelpe, M/M, One day I will have to answer to god for my sins, but it is not this day, listen you don't spend 400 years with someone you hate (unless you're a feanorean), non-graphic slightly alluded to suicide and/or suicidal thoughts, so I made it better, unapologetic misuse of TS Eliot's Lovesong of J Alfred Prufrock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-20
Updated: 2017-06-20
Packaged: 2018-11-16 09:34:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11250405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erlkoenig/pseuds/erlkoenig
Summary: Maybe they're meant to be here. Maybe every path only ever lead to this, here, this moment.In Mordor, Celebrimbor dreams of sparks in the darkness.





	til voices wake us and we drown

_let us go then you and I_  
_when the evening is stretched across the sky_  
__  
through half deserted streets, the muttering retreats  
_streets that follow like a tedious argument_  
_of insidious intent_  
  
_oh do not ask what is it  
__let us go and make our visit_

_\-- the lovesong of j alfred prufrock, ts eliot_

 

  
It's a touch of a cool breeze, the stirring of the grass in the night. A whisper over green in this darkness, dark land, where somehow green still grows as if to say _here I am._  
  
A touch, a ghosting of fingertips over cracked lips.  
  
_Ghosting_ he thinks, feeling the stir and pull, drawn out of this borrowed shell, less violent than the last time. _That's almost funny._ he stretches, like a cat awakened softly from a nap, muscles pulling in the sunshine.  
  
_Moonlight, even here_ and he wonders why he's surprised. Something calls to him, beckons him to follow and he squints into the dark, looking as if for some silver-lighted footprints telling him where to go.  
  
He drifts. _Like a ghost. A ghost_ .  
  
Drawn ever away from where Talion sleeps, hand around the hilt of his sword and restless. He barely glances over his shoulder, feet taking him further and further still.  
  
_He can almost remember the feel of cool grass beneath bare feet._  
_  
_ Tyelpe.

He stills, the breeze now an icy wind in his veins. He should go back, knows he should go back. It's dangerous here, and he knows as sure as he knows the color of the night sky, it's somehow _more_ dangerous now.  
  
_Tyelpe._

His feet move, and he imagines he can hear the shuffle of skin in the grass, the clinging of nightdew against ankles and the imprint of toes in the black earth.  
  
The camp is protected by a sheer cliff face, plunging straight down into the water and the rocks below. Safe here, or so they thought, save for the voice on the wind reaching with soft, grasping fingers. He feels the word over his face like a caress, over cheeks to his ear, down his jawline and then over lips--  
  
\-- _his lips--_

and for a moment he can taste fire.

  
   ---  
  
If he tastes ash, cinders on his lips, between his teeth, neither of them say anything.  
  
Another day, another dead lead, dead end. dead things in this dead land and it's almost funny.  
  
_If they both taste fire they look to Orodruin and say nothing._

He reaches for the earth, touches his fingers to the grass and tries to remember; but he only comes up with the feel of a snatch of silk, red curls twisted around his fingertips and skin as hot and burning as forge fires beneath his fingertips. He pulls his hand back like he's been burned, barely more than a wisp of smoke settled over the ground but Talion notices. Quirks an eyebrow and asks, "what's wrong?"  
  
_Everything._

"It is nothing,” he says.  
  
They say nothing else.

   ---

He wonders, late into the night when the waning moon rises high above the mountain.  
  
He wonders about regret, about sorrow, about laughter and golden eyes and a soft voice telling him _you're full of fancy, Tyelpe, with your fairy stories._  
  
He wonders where those fairy stories come from and whether they ever had some truth to them.  
  
Touches fingers to his lips and listens for the wind--  
  
_perhaps, perhaps, perhaps coming from the south_

\--carrying his name.  
  
There is silence and yet he lingers on, staring at the moon.  
  
_Wondering_.  
  
   ---

 The darkness shifts, undulates in a half-shiver, the breath of some slumbering leviathan.  
  
_Inhale_

It swells, heavy and heady, caught on that precipice between rot and wine.  
  
_Exhale_  
  
Warm and living, the shift of bones beneath skin, some great beast.  
  
_leviathans, he had said once, we were as leviathans_

Waking, writhing, stretching half-dead muscles and sinews.  
  
It spreads like a shadow, spills over the bed and onto the stones. sweeps as a flood through the halls and down stairs until it crashes against the door and then through, out out out into the night.  
  
_Tyelpe._

Spoken like a prayer into the black earth, digging with clawing roots and spreading, searching, twisted tendrils for fingers searching, searching and he knows--  
  
Tyelpe.

He's there -- here, somewhere in this darkness.

  ---

  
It was little more than a weed once, blackened, burnt stem held delicately between two fingers. a perfect halo of white, feather down, carried away in a line like marching soldiers, away away away in the breeze  
  
The breeze that caught strands of red curls and blew them, dancing over dark skin and across golden eyes.  
  
"Tyelperinquar"  
  
Spoken like a command, and they stop, he and Talion, one body at war with itself  
  
_Now?_

 _No,_ he hesitates, _not now._  
  
Knowing it was his undoing once before.  
  
"Are you here to destroy me then?"  
  
He wants to laugh, wants to scream, wants to tell him _I would only be repaying your own deeds_

"We both know I couldn't, even if I wanted to.”  
  
There's a protest behind borrowed lips, a scream, a fury and he closes his eyes.  
  
Tastes cinder and ash and a realization come too late, for which one of them he's not sure

Annatar lets the weed fall from his fingers, exhausted of its seeds and nothing more than a burnt string of grass  
  
"I have missed you.”

   ---  
  
_Once upon a time..._

  
In the darkness fire touched his soul.  
  
It caught like a spark, like an ember, like a single strand of red hair that he still feels wrapped tight around his fingers, pulling until the root gives and a frantic apology falling from his lips. Smothered then in a kiss as bright as starlight, sunlight, hot and burning and choked in laughter. _It is alright, it's all right_

It jumps from vein to vein, pulsing like heartblood in his arteries. He can press his fingers to the bleeding and still feel it hot and wet around his fingertips and it's alright, all right.  
  
It beats in his ears, burning, it's burning him from the inside and he knows --  
  
soul mates are the ones that matter, not the ones that are perfect.  
  
Wraps his arms around a wildfire and he's falling, falling, falling.  
  
Maybe they're meant to be here. Maybe every path only ever lead to this, here, this moment.  
  
The rush of wind around them both and laughter that sounds like anger, like relief, like regret and sorrow and moonlight.  
  
Maybe they were only ever meant to extinguish on the rocks below.

 

**Author's Note:**

> nelyafinwes.tumblr.com


End file.
